The Palliative Care Specialists Series: Equipping the Field for Upstream Care

Over the past decade, palliative care (PC) has moved from a niche service to a critical component of patient-centered care. Initially focused on caring for hospitalized patients near or at the end of life, PC has now expanded its clinical footprint into the outpatient and community settings.^1,2 In addition to diversified care settings, PC practice has moved upstream, helping to improve the care of patients throughout the trajectory of serious illnesses. ³ Caring for patients at any stage of a serious illness requires PC clinicians to possess a broad understanding of many clinical conditions and treatments that were, until recently, exclusively under the purview of disease-specific specialists. In an effort to equip the PC field to integrate into these varied clinical settings with the skills and knowledge to partner effectively with providers of disease-directed therapies, we created Palliative Care Specialists Series that will debut in this month's issue of the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

Building on the training that many PC clinicians have received in internal medicine, family medicine, geriatrics, and pediatrics, among others, this series seeks to bring diverse knowledge to the PC field from medical subspecialties and a variety of nonmedical specialties with whom we regularly share patients. Embedded in the ethos of PC is the spirit of educating others, for example, patients when we are discussing preparing for the future, or educating referring clinicians through collaborative conversations and lectures. In that spirit of our own lifelong learning, we established this series to answer the question: “What can we learn from others and integrate into our practice today?”

Written in a “10 Tips” format to ensure conciseness and easy readability, each article will be written by specialist providers from other fields with either a clinical interest or Board Certification in PC. Some authors in this series are well established in the PC field while others are future leaders, poised at the intersection of PC and their additional area of clinical expertise. Topics set to be explored include radiation oncology, gynecologic oncology, nephrology, advanced gastrointestinal interventions, neurology, pharmacy, interventional radiology, and others.

It is our hope that this series fills the learning needs for both established and growing PC teams. These articles will be useful to seasoned clinicians moving into an unfamiliar clinical arena or whose group is moving into disease-specific practices. Each article could serve as a stand-alone, just-in-time educational offering for trainees or new providers preparing for a related patient encounter. The series, when complete, could also serve as a diverse primer on the intersection of PC and many other specialties for advance practice providers joining the PC team from another specialty or as part of a longitudinal curriculum for fellows or other learners.

We would like to acknowledge the busy specialist clinicians who gave their time and expertise to advance our field. Without their willingness to partner and share, this series would not have been possible. We hope that this series impacts PC in a meaningful way, improving our ability to collaborate with specialists to improve the care and quality of life for all patients with serious illness.